Tarot of the Animal Lords

Every court and trump in Tarot of the Animal Lords pairs an animal head with a human body, a device with a long history in religious art, and Angelo Giannini presses it into service across an unusually wide menagerie: tigers, lynxes, elephants, koalas, walruses, insects, and birds all take a turn standing in for archetypes usually rendered as human. That range is close to the deck's whole argument. Rather than choosing one totem animal and building depth around it, the deck spreads its attention across the animal kingdom, trading depth for variety and betting that recognition, a walrus reads instantly as a walrus, carries real meaning on its own. This deck rewards readers who enjoy spotting which animal got cast in which role, wanting that novelty spread across the whole deck rather than concentrated in a few cards. Readers who want an animal tarot to build a coherent mythology around its creatures, the way a single-species deck can, should expect this one to read more like a menagerie than a mythology.